Golden Doubt is carried by shimmering guitars and the harmonizing vocals of members Holly Thomas and Bella Quinlan. Elevated by the production of Matthew Redlich (Holy Holy, Husky, Ainslie Wills), the record explores what comes after grief, and how we throw ourselves back into love. As Nicholson explains, the album tries to bottle “the rush of feelings and fears when you give in to falling for someone. It’s also an album in love with other albums, and the other bands around us.” Before each take at Woodstock and The Aviary studios in Melbourne, Australia, the band would imagine a scene together (a waterhole for “Laughing Waters”, an overgrown carpark for “Videostores”) and then dive in to capture live group takes.

Quivers stretched out in making Golden Doubt once they nailed foundational band recordings, adding walls of violins (“Hold You Back”), a nine-person choir to “Chinese Medicine”, and a broken Farfisa organ anywhere it would fit. On the striking “Nostalgia Will Kill You,” Michael Panton’s guitar channels Santo & Johnny; with a fresh take on 50s group vocals, Sam, Bella, and Holly sing in wrenching stop-and-starts, “you can’t go back everywhere you want to go / nostalgia will kill you.”

Of the title, Sam says: “Golden, because musically we daydream with the guitars of Teenage Fanclub and The Cure, the singing of The Roches’ sisters, the basslines of Another Sunny Day, and the drums of Lower Dens or Car Seat Headrest. Golden Doubt, because hitting your thirties after losing people knocks you off balance for a while, but no longer caring what the world thinks is always a breakthrough feeling.” Quivers may have created the antidote to existential dread by embedding it in songs that feel so present and alive, we might not find firm ground, but there’s bliss in swinging from hook to hook as they sing “we stayed out ‘til there was glitter in our lungs.” Sooner or later you wake up and the doubt has long gone.

The band are taking “Golden Doubt” on tour, starting tonight! Tour dates!

DEC 16 Eastern, Ballarat
DEC 17 The Bridge, Castlemaine
DEC 18 NSC, Melbourne
JAN 7 Vanguard, Sydney
JAN 8 Altar, Hobart
JAN 13, La La La’s, Wollongong
JAN 15, Live at the Polo, Canberra
JAN 16, Tanswells, Beechworth